Monday, May 28, 2018

Robert
M'Cheyne was born in Edinburgh in May, 1813, the youngest child in a
family of five. His father was a prosperous lawyer and a man of social
importance. Their spacious home, with its gardens, commanded a glorious
view across to the shores of Fife. Here in Edinburgh M'Cheyne spent his
childhood and youth.

After passing successfully though the High School, he entered the Arts
Faculty of the University in autumn 1827. "He was of a lively turn" -
his father later recorded - "and, during the first two or three years of
his attendance at the University, he turned his attention to elocution
and poetry and the pleasures of society …" M'Cheyne became at this time
an eager participant in the city's fashionable entertainments, and
scenes of gaiety - card playing, dancing, music - occupied his leisure
hours.

First, M'Cheyne was different in doctrine. His preaching was clearly
and
definitely in line with the faith of the Reformers and Puritans. That
glorious Puritan document, in which every doctrine is given its true
Scriptural proportion -
The Westminster Confession of Faith - was his constant text book. "Oh
for the grace of the Westminster divines," he writes, "to be poured out
upon this
generation of lesser men." Ruin by the fall, Righteousness by Christ,
and Regeneration by the Spirit was the substance of his preaching.
READ HIS FULL BIOGRAPHY HERE: